Caoilinn Hughes Master Class Recording

Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes, author of the novel Orchid & the Wasp and the award-winning poetry collection Gathering Evidence, gave a special master class for us on Sunday, 28 July 2019 at Boekhandel van Rossum in Amsterdam. You can listen to a recording of the class below, or it is also available as a podcast from the services listed and from our own feed.

The class focused primarily on Hughes’s novel and dipped briefly into her poetry, as well as addressing issues of craft, process and publishing. Specific topics covered by Hughes in conversation with our instructor Karen Kao included:

• figuring out form,
• why short stories are a good way to learn,
• crafting a complex female protagonist,
• writing in the past tense versus writing in the present,
• how publishing can kind of mess with your head and how to protect yourself,
• how to get yourself to sit down and write even when you don’t feel like it or you have limited time, and much more.

Hughes holds a PhD in English Literature from Victoria University, New Zealand and a masters in 20th Century Irish Theatre and Culture from Queens University in Belfast. Anthony Doerr described Orchid & the Wasp as a “gorgeous novel told in an onrush of wit and ferocity” while the Irish Times places Hughes in the vanguard of new Irish fiction. Her debut poetry collection, Gathering Evidence, won the 2015 Irish Times Shine/Strong Award and the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. Her stories have won a Moth International Short Story Prize and an O.Henry Prize.

Orchid & the Wasp was published by Penguin Random House in the US and Oneworld in the UK. Gathering Evidence was published in 2014 by Carcanet Press. You can get your copy from most major book retailers or direct from the publisher.

Copyright © 2019 Caoilinn Hughes & International Writers’ Collective

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International Writers' Collective

Caoilinn Hughes Master Class Recording

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